


Love Is In The Air (And so are the Charm Bracelets)

by Dragomir



Category: Warcraft - All Media Types, World of Warcraft
Genre: Alcohol, Bonding, Bracelets, First Kiss, Fluff, Knives, M/M, it's a date, kind of a first date?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:01:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22704385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dragomir/pseuds/Dragomir
Summary: "You can call me Varian, you know. It'll give Shawhivesif he hears you."
Relationships: Garrosh Hellscream/Varian Wrynn
Comments: 18
Kudos: 47
Collections: Love is in the Air Fic Exchange 2020





	Love Is In The Air (And so are the Charm Bracelets)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sed](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sed/gifts).



> I hope you like it! <3

Garrosh pulled at the string of handmade beads one of Thrall’s pet “champions” had wrapped around his wrist, lips twisting in disgust as the thin, poorly-spun thread snapped easily at a single gentle tug. The pastel ornaments pinged down the hallway he’d ducked into to escape from more of the champions and he glowered after them as they vanished into the gloom, plinking away from him until the echoes died. The warchief’s pets had been harassing him for three days now, offering him bracelets and candy and vials of liquid that smelled more horrific than talbuk piss. One of the champions had been _offended_ when he’d asked if it was talbuk piss - which was at least _useful_. He remembered the herdmaster in Garadar using it to lure in healthy does and stallions when the herd was becoming too inbred for his liking.

The perfume, though… _Disgusting_.

He pulled the remains of the bracelet off his wrist and sent it flying with a flick of his fingers, watching in some satisfaction as the remaining charms flew straight and true into the darkness. How that champion had gotten it tied around his wrist before he’d noticed them…

Fuck it. He would just go beat the warchief’s head into a wall for snickering at him once he’d gotten out of this hallway. Why the warchief put up with his champions being so spirits-forsaken _rude_ , he would never know. He was the Warchief of the Horde, and the champions _should_ have shown him some fucking respect. Not made a _mockery_ of him with stupid, inane, pastel _charm bracelets_.

Garrosh froze when a bead hit his knee. It was _not_ one of the ones he'd gotten rid of. This one was a crude cartoonish heart, like those annoying goblin-things from someplace called Smokeywood Pastures had been throwing at people. He was _still_ finding paper cartoon hearts in his hair... It was the same shade of purple as one of the beads he'd thrown away, so-

A second bead hit his thigh, and Garrosh strained his hearing to find out just who was throwing these things at him. Further down the corridor, judging by the sound of more charms clicking against the stone floor, bouncing away from whoever was throwing them.

Of all the people Garrosh had expected to see in a dark, dusty corridor in a near-forgotten corner of the Violet Citadel, the gratingly irritating Varian Wrynn, sitting on the stone floor as he dismantled a small pile of charm bracelets with the aid of a large knife, wasn’t one of them. Judging by the number of bottles at the human’s side and the bulging sack between his feet, he was drunk.

...It was a little bit _too_ surreal, enough so that Garrosh pinched the inside of his wrist just in case he’d accidentally stepped into an abandoned project that made you see things. His wrist stung sharply, skin breaking under his nails, and he rubbed at it, now annoyed and more confused than before. The human had stopped pulling charms off the bracelet’s cord - whoever was making _his_ bracelets was using sturdy metal chains, so delicate-looking they might have been made of air, rather than thin string, and Garrosh was _not_ jealous of the effort - and reached into the sack between his feet for another bottle of alcohol. Garrosh thought he didn’t actually need more.

How much could a human drink, anyways?

Surely not this much.

….Shit. If Wrynn died because he’d drunk himself into a coma, Thrall was going to kill _him_.

The human froze, hand clasped loosely around the neck of another bottle and Garrosh groaned, realizing he must have made some sound that had alerted Wrynn to his presence. Wrynn’s eyes widened in surprise as he realized who was standing near him. Garrosh wondered if the human was going to stumble upright to try and fight him. Instead, oddly, Wrynn held the bottle up to him, lips curving up in the smile of a contented drunk.

“Join me,” the human insisted, orcish slurred, accent rough with a burr Garrosh associated with the Bleeding Hollow. Wrynn shook the bottle at him, expression slipping from contentment to annoyance. “Drink! Come on! Help me destroy these!” Garrosh sat down gingerly, legs crossed as Wrynn dumped a handful of bracelets into his lap, swaying slightly. The human grinned widely at him, eyes crinkling at the corners. He held out the bottle, and Garrosh shrugged.

Why not?

“Thanks,” he finally grumbled, taking a swig from the bottle. The taste of cheap liquor burned his sinuses, reminding him once again that he was very, very far from home and also very, very lonely. Too many of his own people regarded him with awe for being Grom’s son and didn’t approach him in any way other than reverence. It was unnerving after growing up under the weight of his father’s crimes, and the only person who’d ever tolerated him as a _friend_ was…

Dead.

Dranosh was dead, and he was sitting here with a human, drinking bad alcohol and helping him destroy stupid pastel charm bracelets.

A hand thumped against his bicep. “If you’re still thinking, you’re not drinking enough,” Wrynn said, words still thick with a Bleeding Hollow’s burr. Who had taught him? Garrosh took a quick swig from the bottle to stop the words in his throat and coughed, wheezing as it burned a trail down the back of his throat that felt like swallowing a coal straight from the fire. Wrynn laughed, loud and delighted.

“Moonshine!” the human chortled, eyes crinkled in delight and the same easy grin of a drunk twisting his face. The scars bisecting his face and one eye moved with the expression, and Garrosh realized one of Wrynn’s brows was split neatly in half by the scarring. His eye had been spared, still the same bright blue as his tabard instead of the dull grey-blue of blindness. Garrosh had only ever seen one person with blue eyes, and he wasn’t minded to compare this infuriating human to the warchief.

For one thing, he was starting to like the human. (Although that was probably the alcohol talking.)

“Here.”

Garrosh startled as Wrynn pressed a handful of bracelets into his own hand. His fingers were thick, for a human, and scarred from wear and tear that came from a lifetime of holding a weapon. He had calluses on two fingers from a quill - Thrall had the same ones, although on his right hand instead of his left - and his hands were very, very warm… Garrosh’s ears twitched as he realized he’d been overthinking again, and he groped for the bottle of alcohol he had been gifted.

“You can call me Varian, you know,” the human added, digging the tip of his knife under the edge of another bead and prying it off the chain it was on. Someone had gone to the trouble of welding them in place. “Or Lo’Gosh.” Garrosh caught the grin out of the corner of his eye, self-deprecating in a way he knew too well. “It’ll give Shaw _hives_ if he hears it.” He said that with far too much relish, and Garrosh wondered if Shaw was one of the king’s chief servants - maybe like Proudmoore’s woman who brought tea. Maybe the chief of his household. He’d ask Thrall to explain that again. 

What he did know was that humans weren’t fond of orcs, and neither was Lo’Gosh - how Wrynn had come to have an orcish name, Garrosh didn’t know - but apparently when he was drunk, enough so that he had extended an invitation to use his first name.

“Garrosh,” Garrosh offered. “People always call me _Grom’s son_ first,” he added, tips of his ears burning. “You haven’t. Yet.”

Lo’Gosh snorted, flicking another pastel heart down the corridor. “Pffft. Who cares?” He shrugged one shoulder. “Grom’s not here helping me get through my alcohol or destroy these stupid bracelets.” He stuck his tongue out at the purple heart balanced on one broad fingertip and flicked it away. “Every fucking year. Think the warchief would help me ban Smokeywood from the major cities if I asked?”

Garrosh shook his head. The warchief thought they were amusing. “No.”

The human sighed gustily. “Pity. I hate these things.” He stared morosely at the pile of bracelets he had left to dismantle and began pawing through his bag for another bottle of coal-hot alcohol. “Completely useless. Anduin tells me I need to _smile_ when people give me these things. ...Think he bribed someone to weld these together so I couldn’t destroy them this year.”

“You destroy them every year?” Garrosh asked, holding one bracelet up to his eyes so he could squint at them. The weld was very neat, from what he knew of the practice. Not goblin done - goblin work held, but it wasn’t going to be pretty. Someone had gone to a lot of effort to make these indestructible.

Lo’Gosh grunted in assent, flicking another handful of beads away. “Every. Fucking. Year,” he confirmed. He took another swig from his bottle. “Would you kiss me?”

“What?!”

The human glared at him, blue eyes narrowed. “Would. You. Kiss me?” he repeated, enunciating. The Bleeding Hollow burr reminded Garrosh of Jorin, suddenly, although Jorin - if he had ever let himself get this inebriated - would have just grabbed him by the back of the head and kissed him until Garrosh punched him away. He felt a pang of homesickness and, lost in moroseness, almost missed Lo’Gosh’s fingers wrapping around the back of his neck to pull him forward. Before he could pull away, the human had pulled him into a sloppy, inelegant kiss that tasted like the alcohol they had both been drinking.

Lo’Gosh pulled back, smiling slowly, like a very pleased cat. “You think too much,” he said, rubbing one finger over the tip of Garrosh’s ear, grinning when the orc shuddered under his touch. “Stop that.”

“And be a human?” Garrosh laughed. Before he could stop himself, he bent forward and captured the human’s lips in another kiss. Lo’Gosh sighed into it, pressing forward, bracelets clattering to the ground as he rolled onto his knees. Garrosh wrapped his fingers around the back of Lo’Gosh’s head, fingers catching in the long, dark hair that had escaped from the man’s ponytail.

He honestly wasn’t surprised when someone found them later, Lo’Gosh between his legs as they dismantled the rest of the bracelets and passed a bottle of moonshine back and forth.

**Author's Note:**

> Shaw did not, in fact, get hives. He did contemplate retirement for the fifth time that week, though.


End file.
